I’m not normal
I got up at dawn again. I hadn’t been sleeping past six. Habit, I guess.
I sat on the front porch and looked over at the commune. My commune. It wasn’t that I was greedy or that I wanted to hurt Jasmine or Ellie or any of the commune families by taking it back. Maybe part of me wanted to hurt Jasmine for what she did to Dad and Darla, but it was more logical than that.
It was our land.
I thought, for our sake, we should have it.
If Dad wanted to move to California or Vermont, then he’d need it. If he died tomorrow, then I would be left with the mess. I didn’t care if Ellie never spoke to me again. I didn’t care if Jasmine threw a hissy fit. It was ours. The trick would be convincing Dad, who had been happy to leave things the way they were in order to avoid having to do anything about it. Probably reminded him of what happened. Probably reminded him of everything.
Ellie saw me on the porch and walked over at around eight.
“I’ll be back at nine. Is that okay? Extra chores for missing yesterday. My mother is a freak.”
“I don’t feel like it today, Ellie,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I just want to be by myself today or something,” I said. As I said it, I could see her processing the last time we saw each other. I hoped she would remember that I was mad at the world. I hoped she might ask me if I was okay.
“It’s Markus, isn’t it?”
I stayed silent.
“God, Glory. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be a normal girl like you are?”
“I’m not normal,” I said.
“You’re what my mom wants me to be,” she said.
“Your mom doesn’t like me,” I said. “Because I look like my mom.”
“We both look like our moms,” she said. “Shit. I hope that doesn’t mean we’re going to do what they did.”
“Like what?”
“Like break up,” she said. “I don’t want to break up.”
“I don’t think we will,” I said. “I mean, the thing that broke them up was kind of a big deal, and that can’t happen to us.”
“What was that?” Ellie asked.
“What?”
“The thing that broke them up?”
Since I couldn’t tell Ellie the truth, I said the first thing that came to mind. “The land.”
She cocked her head. “What land?”
“Where you live. The commune. It’s my mom’s land,” I said, pointing to her house.
“So they fought over the price of it or something?”
“Well, no,” I answered. “They never bought it from her. It’s—uh—still ours, pretty much.”
“What?”
“The land.”
“It’s still yours? Like we rent?” she said.
“No rent.”
I think she was mad, but not as mad as she would have been had I told her the real reason that our mothers stopped talking to each other.
We stayed there for a minute, just looking over at her house. She was processing, probably. I was still wondering if she’d ever ask me if I was okay. She didn’t, so I changed the subject.
“So what’s the deal with you and Markus Glenn?” I asked. “Has he gotten any less assholey since seventh grade?”
“He was—um—kinda weird with me last night,” she said.
“Like how?”
“He was pretty pervy.”
I laughed a little. “You didn’t know this?”
“Well, yeah, but I mean, he wouldn’t even kiss me. He just kept—you know—paying attention to my boobs.”
“Paying attention? That’s romantic.”
She smacked me on my arm. “It’s not funny. It was kinda creepy, pretty much. It was like the rest of me didn’t really exist. Just—uh—them.”
“Your boobs.”
“Yeah.”
I sighed. “He’s probably watched so much boob porn that boobs are like people to him now or something.”
“Yeah.”
“Did he call them by name?” I asked, giggling.
She laughed. “Stop it.”
“But did he?”
“He’s still coming to the star party tonight.”
I didn’t question her motives or her sanity. Maybe this is what normal girls do, right? And I did what other normal girls do. There are billions of us out there. Just like stars—none of us is the same.
“I’m still invited, right?” I said.
“Of course,” she said.
She went back to the commune and I watched her walking and I wondered how many times Darla sat on this porch and watched Jasmine walk back to the commune. I wondered if Darla ever wanted to take it back, too.
The Zone System didn’t have a zone for how I was feeling right then. I was very high contrast—all blacks and whites and no grays. I was a lithograph.
My zone 0 was max black: Holy shit I am living next door to a bunch of sex-crazed freaks and my mother killed herself after one of the sex-crazed freaks sent naked pictures of herself to my father. Or, in short: I am an extra in an ugly movie about sex-crazed squatter hippies. I didn’t sign up for this shit.
My zone 10 was blown-out white: I am probably the sanest person I know, even though my mother killed herself when I was four, I eat all microwaved food and I live across the road from squatter hippies. Compared to my sex-crazed friend, I am a real winner.
I went inside and took a long shower. After my shower, I curled up in bed and tried to take a nap. Instead, I thought about the transmissions and how a day without them would be better than a day at the mall with Ellie. Even if I missed a chance to see Peter. Even if I missed a chance to find my USS Pledge man, who might have the answers I’d been looking for.
After an hour under my covers not sleeping, I got up and got dressed and wrote a chapter in my book about some of the transmissions I’d seen in the mall the day before. Then I opened my computer and waited for it to boot up.
I wanted to look up the USS Pledge.
I wanted to look up squatters’ laws in Pennsylvania.